Missing convictions in database allow some criminals to buy guns

This is a .223-caliber, semi-automatic Stag 15 rifle. In 2005, Demario Terrell Davis bought a Stag 15 from a Mobile gun shop. Because of holes in Alabama's crime database, a background check failed to detect that Davis was barred from possessing guns. At the time, according to police, Davis was involved with violent group suspected in gun battles in Mobile's Maysville area. MOBILE, Ala. -- Demario Terrell Davis' 2004 arrest on a misdemeanor marijuana charge popped up on a federally required background check when he sought to buy a military-style rifle in Mobile the following winter.

Criminal history records did not reveal the final result of that arrest, however. Government checkers had three business days to find the answer, according to the law, or the sale could go through regardless.

The government lost that race against the clock, and Davis had himself a new .223-caliber Stag 15.

Such situations are all too common in Alabama: A state-maintained computer database has 2.7 million arrest records that do not reflect the outcome of the case.

"We have dispositions without arrests," said Maury Mitchell, the director of the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. "We have arrests without dispositions."

In Davis' case, the problem might have proved particularly frightening.

The day after Davis acquired the rifle, officials discovered that he was prohibited from possessing a firearm. In fact, police at the time said that Davis, his brother and another man called themselves the "Maysville Soldiers" and were linked to gun battles in their south-central Mobile neighborhood.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives soon arrested Davis for having the rifle, and he eventually pleaded guilty and served a year in prison.

There are several reasons for the holes in the information about criminal records, according to Mitchell and others.

While many courts send the data to the state electronically, for instance, Mitchell said that a substantial portion still arrives on a sheet of paper and must be entered into the system by hand.

Then there is the problem of matching the original arrest to the charges brought in court. They often are not the same. Mitchell said a police officer might initially file a burglary charge, while the district attorney may present the same case to grand jurors as theft but later negotiate a plea bargain that results in a trespassing conviction.

The instant background check system was designed to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. When a gun retailer runs a check, the system reviews criminal records from throughout the United States and usually returns "clear" or "denied." Sometimes, though, the system comes back "delayed."

That's when government officials have to figure out the disposition of an arrest within a three-day window.

Mitchell said he has an employee in his office who does nothing else. The job requires examining a vast warehouse of records via computer and even calling clerks in county courthouses and asking them to look up a record in a paper file.

"That pops up as a priority over everything else," said Becki Goggins, manager of the agency's crime statistics and information division.

Goggins said she did not know how often that the state locates the information within the three-day window, and how often it comes up empty. "We don't have a way to track it," she said.

But, she added, "I would feel comfortable saying, 'Usually.'"

If the government determines that a prohibited buyer has obtained a gun, the local ATF office gets involved. Mike Messinger, the resident agent in charge of the ATF in Mobile, said his office handles about a dozen such cases a month, on average.

Brad Williamson, who owns Quint's Hardware & Sporting Goods in Saraland, said very few gun buyers get denied during a background check -- probably fewer than 1 percent. But, he added, "It's not uncommon for a customer to get a delay."

Even when the government cannot learn the case resolution within three days, a retailer has the right to refuse the gun sale.

Davis bought his rifle from Larry's Sporting Goods & Gun Shop, a now-closed store on Pleasant Valley Road that law-enforcement agents raided in August in an unrelated case. The owner, Larry McCoy, goes on trial this week.

Mobile County sheriff creates database to flag mental patients

MOBILE, Ala. -- The Mobile County Sheriff's Office has launched a database to keep track of local people who have hearings to assess their mental competence.

Sheriff Sam Cochran said he created the system after a Press-Register story revealing that the state reports only a tiny fraction of involuntary mental health commitments to a national database used to conduct instant background checks of gun buyers.

Federal law makes gun ownership illegal for anyone who has been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. But under state law, Alabama submits those records only in cases where a law enforcement officer has testified that the person has used firearms inappropriately or is a danger.

That, according to officials, is an extremely small number of involuntary commitments.

At present in Alabama, a mental patient could perhaps buy a gun without detection and also obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Cochran said he has started a database with the names of everyone to whom deputies serve notices of commitment hearings in Probate Court. Cochran said that the database will help his staff determine whether to issue concealed-weapons permits.

He pointed to an incident several years ago in which a mentally unstable man barricaded himself with a stash of weapons and fired a gun.

"Here's a guy who at minimum needs to at least be flagged to the point where someone on the local level can make a decision," he said.

Cochran's database still won't stop mental patients from buying guns, and will not include those who have been committed in other jurisdictions. But he said that it is a start. One day, he added, a mentally troubled person is liable to commit a horrific crime with a gun he never should have had.

"You're going to have a backlash," he said. "Wouldn't they rather have someone at the local level make that decision?"

Mike Messinger, the resident agent in charge of the Mobile office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, praised Cochran's action. "That's being very conscientious," he said.